grunts and guns

The Walrus has is an amazingly illuminating photo essay of military latrine graffiti taken in Kuwait by Steve Featherstone. It takes a direct approach to the very interesting subject of criticizing nefarious, misguided public policy decisions in the pooper.

The bathroom is a strange place, it's intimate but public. everything you do in there is private, but yet, it lingers on after you've left. I have always admired people who have the huevos to voice their opinion through the written word, even if it's while you're parked on the shitter. Even though these guys are generally not that articulate, hell, they're ballsy, admirably so. I also appreciate their deep emotional tirades depicting the discomfort and frustration that they feel due to being trapped in the friggin' desert, just waiting for someone to stroll by with a strap-on bomb and blow them to bits. My heart truly goes out to these guys; tragically waiting to die for oil.

I wonder how they'll feel when they come home and find that gas has gone up more than $2.00 a gallon since Bush stole the presidency. Blood money, right in the Bush/Cheney bank.


My favorite highlight though is the frowning face over which is non-ironically written, "It smells like shit in here."

I've also been watching this 10 part series, Carrier: Life Aboard the Aircraft Carrier USS Nimitz, on WPBT Channel 2, it documents a Navy voyage, how incredibly intense the experience is and how conflicted these men and women are about their jobs, their families and their fractured lives. The military culture is rooted, in many ways, in the drama and emotion of that surrounds separation. I know this is a topic that has been written about in better detail than I could even dream of writing, but I think that in this time of war, it's interesting to examine the lives of the people who are being sent away from home again and again, being put into dangerous situations, being injured and missing their families, being extremely scared and uncomfortable, lonely, trapped, powerless and conflicted about why this is happening. It makes my heart sink to hear one of the women on Carrier say that she trusts her life in the hands of decision-makers, because she believes that they'll do what right for her, for all of them. It shocks me to hear someone still say that after all that has happened over the past almost eight years. Luckily most of the people on the ship realize that the circumstances that placed them there are more than somewhat dubious and that this war is not worth dying for.


Check out holy Dick, and click here for some great little nuggets of Cheneyness.